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Significant click discrepancies in the US with Voluum (6)

12-22-2014 07:28 PM #1 integrity (Member)
Significant click discrepancies in the US with Voluum

Hey guys, just noticed something odd in my stats and was curious to know if any of you have noticed something similar.

I've been using Voluum pretty much exclusively for the past ~8 months doing mostly mobile stuff. Landers have all been static pages hosted on Rackspace's CDN. The setup has been rock solid thus far, especially for international mobile campaigns where it seems to blow most other setups I've tested out of the water.

However..

I have recently been running some US web tests and noticed quite a large click discrepancy from my Voluum offer clicks to my network stats. I'm talking upwards of 50% click loss.

I thought it may have been due to the fact that I was using the double meta refresh option, but I've also been using that for my international mobile campaigns and it isn't an issue there. So, I got to thinking and remembered that Voluum tracking is cookie based. Could most browsers in the US or some browser security extensions/av software somehow be interfering with Voluum's tracking? US Web traffic is where I would expect to have the least amount of click discrepancies, not the most. I know the Voluum support site says that in case cookies are disabled, the click IDs will be passed onto the lander. But perhaps there is still an issue somehow?

Anyone noticed this or something similar? Been contemplating setting up Thrive or another self-hosted tracker to see if the problem persists.

12-22-2014 08:03 PM #2 zeno (Administrator)

Pretty sure cookie blocking won't be an issue as they have all the Voluum info in the URL that can be fetched via the referrer.

From my perspective Voluum uses referrers and falls back to cookies if they happen to be available (a current gen tracker relying on cookies isn't sensible design!).

If your click loss is from Voluum to the network then this infers that the outgoing click is successfully tracked by Voluum, so no problem there, and the click then either gets sent to the wrong destination or the affiliate tracking system is the problem.

If you have no rules in your campaign that may do this and checking the offers stats for that campaign shows that the clicks are all actually going to offer X, then I would point the finger at the affiliate network. I can guarantee that their tracking system and infrastructure is far worse than Voluum's.

As another test: can you split-test the same offer across multiple networks?

12-22-2014 08:48 PM #3 mehdi (Member)

EDIT : Apparently i'm the one who messed up :/ sorry !
(timezone issue)

Mehdi

12-22-2014 09:03 PM #4 integrity (Member)

Originally Posted by zeno

Ah, thanks for clarifying on that, Zeno. Here's the Voluum support article I read that made me think their tracking relied primarily on a cookie:

http://feedback.Voluum.com/knowledge...ng-up-a-lander

And about the network being the issue, it's just weird as I have only noticed this for some US campaigns I ran. The rest of the international mobile campaigns seem to be fine in the click loss dept (10-20%) which I've been used to seeing on this type of traffic.

So far I've noticed the discrepancy going to 2 different networks, although I have not split tested the same offer and network at the same time to rule them out as a possible culprit.

Originally Posted by mehdi

Funny you should post about this today as I was just thinking about posting something myself, I have contacted voluum about the issue and was forced to pause my campaigns till they answer.

Similar problem, all of the sudden, a campaign that has been running for 2 weeks now, with consistent EPV and network EPC; now EPV is cut by half, and EPC on the network is still the same, so I checked the click loss and it went from a consistent 5-10% to 35% today ... i'm also using double meta refresh with mobile.

The outgoing clics are tracked correctly by voluum, ctr% is the same, so the problem is in the redirect between voluum and the network, just like you.

Mehdi

Wow, so I guess there's definitely something going on on their end.

Is this is a US campaign as well, or are you noticing this across the board?

That's pretty much exactly what I'm seeing. Network EPC and Voluum CTR is intact, but Voluum offer clicks to network is where the loss is occurring. I keep testing the links on my end but can't seem to replicate the issue. Have not tested without the double meta refresh to see if that could be the culprit, but it has not been an issue before and the links work fine for me on multiple browsers.

Very interested to know what Voluum says about this.

12-22-2014 09:09 PM #5 mehdi (Member)

Originally Posted by integrity

Wow, so I guess there's definitely something going on on their end.

Is this is a US campaign as well, or are you noticing this across the board?

That's pretty much exactly what I'm seeing. Network EPC and Voluum CTR is intact, but Voluum offer clicks to network is where the loss is occuring. I keep testing the links on my end but can't seem to replicate the issue.

Very interested to know what Voluum says about this.

Sorry I just finished copying everyting into spreadsheets manually to triple-check and it seems like timezones on the different networks got the best of me on this one.

I have to admit I was kind of wishing it was that, because now i'm left with the advertiser having problems as the only explanation ..

Mehdi

12-22-2014 09:24 PM #6 integrity (Member)

Originally Posted by mehdi

Ah, well I'm glad you found out where your discrepancies came from. I was kinda hoping the issue was related to Voluum also, as now that would mean the network might be at fault here. I thought it could be the advertiser, but the link has to pass through the network before it gets to the advertiser's link, so that shouldn't be causing the issue.

I think I may have to split test another network here, like Zeno recommended.

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